Facing global sustainability issues: teachers’ experiences of their own practices in environmental and sustainability education

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, international organisations and national governments have stressed the need for education policies to be (re)oriented towards social change, sustainability and preparing students for life in a global society. This area of pedagogy is not problem free. When policy is turned into practice teachers need to take a number of factors into account, especially when global sustainability issues are complex. In this article I investigate how six teachers with experience of international professional development reflect on and incorporate global sustainability issues in their teaching. These teachers articulated different ways of utilising the curriculum and enacting pedagogies relating to colonialism and complex global issues. The conclusion is that these teachers’ experiences can help us to understand this work and how it can be developed.

Keywords:

• teaching
• global sustainability issues
• postcolonial theory
• environmental and sustainability education
• teaching practice

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions for the improvement of the paper. I am also very grateful to Professor Johan Öhman at Örebro University for his generous comments and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Under ‘education for global citizenship’ Mannion et al. (2011) bring three educational traditions that together address environmental, sustainability and development issues and dimensions: environmental education (EE), development education (DE), and citizenship education (CE). According to the authors, EE, DE and CE traditions also include education for sustainability or education for sustainable development, peace education, global education, multicultural education and international education (445).

2. In UNESCO (2002) the term ‘global equity and justice’ is used as a synonym for intragenerational equity, thus emphasising that ‘the rights and needs of others are met so that a fair and abundant quality of life is provided for everyone around the world’ (16).

3. To exemplify, the Swedish national curriculum states that education should provide students with insights that enable them to develop a personal approach to overarching, global environmental issues. Education should also contribute to developing students’ sense of international solidarity and responsibility (The National Agency for Education 2011).

4. In the in-service training programme called the Global Journey, only teachers took part in the North–South study visit. However, an objective of the programme is that the teachers’ experiences will be incorporated into their teaching and in that way shared with their students.

5. Cf. Fien (1995), Huckle (1999), Jensen and Schnack (2006), Lundegård and Wickman (2007), Vare and Scott (2007), Englund, Öhman, and Östman (2008), Jickling and Wals (2008), Sund and Wickman (2008), Öhman (2008, 2009).